Working Papers in Economics and Statistics

For a list of recent papers see the backpages of this paper. Abstract. While most papers on team decision-making find that teams behave more selfishly, less trustingly and less altruistically than individuals, Cason and Mui (1997) report that teams are more altruistic than individuals in a dictator game. Using a within-subjects design we reexamine group polarization by letting subjects make individual as well as team decisions in an experimental dictator game. In our experiment teams are more selfish than individuals, and the most selfish team member has the strongest influence on team decisions. Various explanations for the different findings in Cason and Mui (1997) and in our paper are discussed. * We would like to thank Tim Cason, Jim Cox (as guest editor for this paper) and three anonymous referees for excellent comments. Olga Mellizo did a great job in copy-editing. Financial support from the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF Project P16617) and the Center for Experimental Economics at the University of Innsbruck (sponsored by Raiffeisen-Landesbank Tirol) is gratefully acknowledged.

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